A Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology refers to a technology for short-distance light wireless communication with light which is visible for human eyes and has a wavelength ranged from 400 nm to 700 nm. The VLC technology has the advantages of being immune to electromagnetic interference, being immune to interference related to a Radio Frequency (RF) system and the like, and adopting a spectrum range which falls into unlicensed spectra. When visible light is adopted for data transmission, a visible light source (such as a light-emitting diode) may be rapidly turned on and turned off or luminance of the visible light source may be modulated at a sender; and at a receiver, a modulated light signal is converted into data which may be processed by the receiver after being received.
When visible light is adopted for communication, it is necessary to ensure that there is no influence on normal use of illumination equipment by a user at the same time of implementing data transmission. Thus, the following two problems are required to be considered: the first is to realize a data transmission function; and the second is to ensure support to luminance regulation of a light source, i.e. dimming, on the premise of no flicker of the light source.
In a related technology, the following two manners are mainly adopted for dimming:
1) a sender implements dimming by virtue of an idle pattern, namely by independently sending a frame configured to regulate luminance, in an idle/receiving state, but such a manner does not provide a specific implementation solution for realizing a dimming function; and
2) in a physical layer, an idle pattern closely related to a modulation manner and a channel coding scheme is adopted for dimming, and in such a manner, luminance of a light source may be regulated to a set extent only, and the luminance of the light source may not be smoothly regulated, so that such a manner is not so flexible in dimming.